User blog:Deadcoder/Deadcoder's Reviews: X.A.N.A.'s Kiss
One of the main reasons that Code Lyoko succeeded was because of a good cast, and good resulting character drama. It would make sense in theory to build an episode around a strength of the series, which is how X.A.N.A.'s Kiss came to be. Theory and reality can vary though. This review will evaluate that, as part of User:Alex531's request for this episode, which I am doing as a farewell gift to our wiki's former leader. =The Review= X.A.N.A.'s Kiss starts off with Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich walking down the dorm hall, with obvious bulging from Ulrich. This episode has about as much subtlety as Chernobyl, but it's decent enough to warn you in a pleasurable way. I give the episode +1 point, because manners matter. They're talking about the list of girls that Odd has been involved with. It's official, Odd is a slut. We then get a moment of Sissi being an ass. I hate to say it, but having seen this scene, I almost look forward to season 4, when Herb will be part of an angry mob, working to push her off the side of a building. We then see a shot of a tower activating "there will be a similar theme throughout the episode." Further setting the theme, we see Herb angry at Ulrich for rejecting Sissi, in a truly pathetic display. We then get a comment about love making people stupid. Jeremie mentions giving Aelita a french pastry. We're less than 3 minutes in, and the episode has already called out half of the character flaws of Jeremie "being an incompetent genius". In the vain of love and stupidity, Odd makes a similar subtle lewdity, in the showers with Ulrich. I half expect/hope that this turns out to be the poorly-put-together introduction of a slashfic that somehow got animated. COME ON, it's two male characters in a shower, one of whom is a pervert, after one of them just rejected a female character? I hope it's a slashfic that I found by mistake, because the plot would probably be better than this episode. To ruin your fantasies, XANA shows up in the shower room. Rule 34 is for the content of the internet, not the programs on it. To kick off the drama, or whatever more accurate term you may prefer, we see Jeremie kissing Heidi, while we see Yumi make out with a character whose name I don't care about. William is surprised by it. I'm not though. Yumi is already will-they-won't-they with 2 men. Is a third that hard to believe? Heidi then calls Jeremie out on this behavior in front of Aelita, who walks off. Disturbingly, despite this, he's STILL treated her better than her father. We then get insipid behavior from the characters in the cafeteria. I'm offended by this, because they use the piano/harp depression music for this. This music was used in my favorite scene in "Franz Hopper", and I hate to see it tainted with something this stupid. Like XANA, William knows that the group's petty in-fighting is more dangerous than the series' actual antagonist, so in revenge against Yumi, he tells Ulrich about her depravities. Yumi and Jeremie meet, and discuss the episode so far. It's a funny microcosm of the series. Those two being the only sane ones, but I think this is the first time they've bonded over the matter. Since this episode has no suspense, we then get a scene of a spectre transforming from Yumi into Ulrich, for the 10% of the viewers who were too stupid to figure out the plot. YAY! Now we're all annoyed! He then makes out with Sissi, while Herb hates this universe and everyone in it. As they make out, Jeremie grabs Yumi's butt "not joking" and they watch. In a subtle take-that, the show calls out another case of a bunch of people being stupid and fighting, world war 1, which can best be described as all of the european countries having PMS at the same time. Jim then spots the spectre that everyone already knows about, and the spectre avoids him by the power of Mono! Aelita then kisses Nicolas, and causes a fight between Aelita and Jeremie. Aelita then runs off, likely to be the only smart one or kill herself "in this episode, one would be the other". Jeremie is then alone in his room and notices his activated tower. Jeremie figures out what's going on, and uses one of the few 2d weapons they have: a phone tree scene. Everyone but Aelita meets in the park, with Jeremie explaining what's going on. Aelita then turns out to be hiding in the Hermitage. Amusingly, this makes perfect sense, given that she understands it subconsciously, but not consciously. Jeremie then finds her. He explains what's going on, and they make up "and kiss, for your shipping pleasure". They go outside, but find two Jeremies. The others arrive, and call out the plot, in case you were on the john for the first half. Oddly, it turns out the one who apologized was the fake one! That suits their relationship. Everyone but Odd leaves, and the Spectre pads out the episode with uneeded transformations, eventually reaching Jim. The others reach the factory, because the writers have no sense of scale, in any dimension, be it spacial or temporal. Jeremie starts playing the season2 virtualization music, while he just starts up the automated virtualization. :Yumi: "Have you ever noticed that Jeremie plays that track all the time when we're here?" :Aelita: "If I didn't know better, I'd say he was just goofing off up there, while he runs the bigfatcheesehead program." :Ulrich: "Big Fat Cheese Head?" :Aelita: "It's a private joke between Jeremie and Me." The episode then pads out further with a full virtualization sequence, and then a reminder that the storyboard people have no sense of scale. Odd and Odd fight, while Ulrich tries to fight the Hornets without a ranged weapon. We get the usual stuff, with un-needed flipping galore. Amazingly, Aelita actually runs to the tower. The bridge devirtualizes behind her, because Moonscoop already paid for that shot in season 1, so we might as well get our money's worth. We get more and more of the usual Lyoko ineptitude, plus the autopilot of the Overwing being a better pilot than Yumi. Yumi finally remembers to hit the damn things on the eyes, and takes out most of them. Her job done, she gets devirtualized. In the lab, season 1 footage is being used like toilet paper after taco bell. The spectre arrives, pretends to be Yumi, and beats up Jeremie. The real Yumi and Odd arrive, and defeat the spectre with sillyness. Jeremie gets back to the controls, and the tower is backflip deactivated justInTime, like usual. We see Jim with Yolanda, who reveals her fiance. Aelita then kisses Jeremie, who freezes up like the Matte painting. Review Summary This episode is awful. There's filler galore, no suspense, and all the comedy is unintentional. It's like the writers were trying to point out all the problems with the series, but with the polish stripped away, to just show the wrong things. The Lyoko scenes are moronic, the attack is obvious, and the characters are idiots. If I didn't know better, I'd say that it's deliberately bad by writers who didn't care, just so we could get used to crap, and appreciate the rest of the series more. This episode is a palate cleanser made of raw sewage. It's deliberate crap so you can appreciate everything else. We know it's deliberate because it calls out all of the series problems, including its own via exaggeration. Overall rating: 2/10. This episode would be a zero, but two things give it a point each. One, the episode did warn you at the beginning that it would suck. Two, this episode was a horrible implementation, but it was an interesting idea: instead of Xana trying an actual attack, have the group destroy itself, since the group's infighting has already been able to do just as much damage as Xana itself. Sadly, this concept isn't fully met either. Did you really expect anything better from the guy who co-wrote amnesia? On a more serious unrelated note; I would like to thank all of my readers for enjoying my reviews. I would like to ask for a minor form of appreciation. I'm not making a Patreon account. Instead, I would like to ask all of you to, by lawful means only, set aside some money for a medical research group, the Foregen Organization: foregen.org. Foregen is working on researching regenerative medicine for victims of a specific type of non-consensual plastic surgery, that I can't mention on this blog, because of wiki content rules. However, this is a charity that is worthy of help, and I would like you all to try. In leu of donations to support Deadcoder's Reviews, I would like all of my viewers to donate some money to Foregen to aid medical research. Thank you all again for enjoying this review, and I hope it made you think about something. Category:Blog posts Category:X.A.N.A.'s Kiss